


Kindred Strangers

by SylvanWitch



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Coda to s09ep25, Gen, s07ep01, spoilers for s09ep25, spoilers for s10ep01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 10:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20852090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Different chapel, different crisis, same angel waiting in the pews.





	Kindred Strangers

Honolulu Medical Center has a chapel, of course. It’s just as quiet and removed and carefully nondenominational as Tripler’s.  
  


One difference is that Steve walks into this chapel under his own power, though he’s carrying just as much weight and feeling just as uncertain as he had at Tripler.  
  


He’s almost not surprised to see an elderly gentleman sitting in the shadows three pews back from the altar on the right. Somehow, Steve had suspected he might run into him again.  
  


Steve touches the man on the shoulder to get his attention and says, “I can come back later if you’d like,” intending to suit action to words, but the old man’s face lights up, and he gestures to the empty stretch of pew next to him.  
  


“Please, I’d welcome the company. I’ve thought of you now and then over the years,” he adds, dispelling Steve’s concern that the old man may have forgotten him.  
  


“Are you here for your wife?” Steve asks, wondering if it’s the wrong question as soon as it’s out of his mouth.  
  


As the happy light slides from the man’s eyes, Steve wishes he hadn’t asked it, but the man says, “She went on ahead of me,” with the kind of simple faith that expects nothing of others and everything of the god he believes in.  
  


Steve wishes he had that kind of faith.  
  


“I’m here for my granddaughter,” the man goes on, and Steve’s heart sinks into his belly, until he continues, “She’s just had my first great-grandbaby, a beautiful little girl named Amelia Rose. Rose was my wife’s name.”  
  


“It’s a beautiful name,” Steve answers, feeling a little choked up at the hope filling the lines of the old cop’s face.  
  


“What brings you here? Not injured again, I hope.”  
  


“Uh, someone I work with—someone I care about—got hurt today. He’s in surgery. He, uh, he lost a lot of blood, and they aren’t…” Steve has to clear his throat to keep his voice from wavering. “They aren’t sure he’s going to make it.”  
  


“And you think that’s somehow your fault?” the old man asks, gentle but also probing. Steve looks up, surprised at how the old cop cut right to the heart of his guilt.  
  


Steve nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it might be. There was this mission…”  
  


When he came to the chapel, Steve hadn’t intended to spill all of this, not to a god he’s not sure exists and certainly not to a stranger he happened to meet again in the dim, still space of a hospital chapel. But he finds himself trying to explain what happened at the Hassan compound all those years ago and then on a lonely Montana ranch that led to Jerry Ortega fighting for his life in a hospital in Hawaii.  
  


“This Joe White meant a lot to you, didn’t he?”  
  


Steve nods, throat too tight to speak.  
  


“And I’ll bet he was proud of you for the job you do and the man you are?”  
  


This time, Steve can’t even nod, astonishment and embarrassment and a thousand other uneasy feelings prickling just beneath his skin.  
  


“You do no one any good taking on blame that doesn’t belong to you, son,” the stranger offers. “Trust me.” It’s the kind of intimacy reserved for kindred strangers, maybe.   
  


Steve wants to say, _Trust you? I don’t even _know_ you_, but he has a feeling that that would be a kind of lie.   
  


“Thanks,” he says instead, his voice gruff. Steve’s throat aches with unshed tears, and he swallows around a lump the size of a fist. He turns in the pew to say it again, this time facing the man, wanting to ask his name, to let him know how much he appreciates the advice from a veteran of the job.  
  


Somehow, Steve’s not as surprised as he should be to discover that there’s no one there.  
  


He takes a shaky breath and turns toward the altar, letting the twin candle flames blur in his vision, thinking about Jerry and Joe and Omar Hassan’s grandson and his own father and mother and Mary and Joanie and Charlie and Grace and Danny.  
  


“Okay,” he says to no one, nodding as he speaks. “Okay,” he says again, like he’s making a promise.  
  


He pushes up from the pew, lets his legs steady under him in the aisle, and then heads back out into the hushed bustle of the hospital, feeling certain for the first time in a long while that maybe he doesn’t have to carry this weight alone. He’s still not sure he believes in god, but it seems pretty obvious to him that angels, anyway, show up when you need them.


End file.
